From hypertext to flat text: a tool for document construction

165. J. Yang, W. Ma and R. P. Brent, From hypertext to flat text: a tool for document construction, Proceedings of the Second Australian World Wide Web Conference, Southern Cross University Press, 1996, 67-72.

Abstract: html (3K).

Paper: html (22K), pdf (66K), ps (85K).

Abstract

The hyperlinked nature of documents on the World Wide Web (WWW) gives users great freedom for browsing and authoring. However it becomes awkward when a user wants to print a document with such a hierarchical structure, for example, the on-line Netscape Handbook. In this case, the user has to fetch and print each piece of the interesting documents separately and then assemble them together manually. Even worse, the assembling-together could not be possible without physically cutting and pasting when a piece of document is linked from the middle of its parent text. In this paper, we present a flexible tool which can automatically follow the hyperlinks of a main document and replace each link with the actual sub-document content. In other word, it transforms a hierarchically structured hypertext to a flat form in its final output so that hard-copy printing is possible.

Comments

Due to the ephemeral nature of the Web, some of the links in the paper no longer work - apologies!

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